Hear the monsters emerging from the depths of the underworlds? They're splitting the ground with archaic rhythms, splashing across seas with new sounds.
The Dolomites' full-blown turbulence hits on The Japan Years,
Volumes I-III (release:
September 11, 2015) with accordions for teeth, tubas and balkan beats for backbones, gravely cuts and lyrical quirks. The EP trilogy captures the best of the band's driving force, Stevhen Koji Baianu, whose family roots extends from Japan to Romania.
The Dolomites' music has the same wide embrace, drawing on everything from old-school Japanese mafia enka to Tzigani (Romani) melodies, Indonesian gamelan and space cumbia to otherworldly odds and ends. Bittersweet Balkan ballads alternate with tuba-powered drum and bass, aggressive and eloquent accordion, tribal scatting and an array of theremin, gongs, violin, Latin and Japanese percussion, to tease and soothe the little beasties in all of us.
"The monsters in some of the songs are there for a reason. Some Japanese legends say that folkloric monsters tend to rise in the form of natural disasters when humans over extend their boundaries with the destruction of the planet and environment," muses Stevhen. "All of us have a monster within us. Both good and bad monsters."
This same sense of generous-hearted rebellion waltzes through The Dolomites' Japanese Mestizo tracks. Stevhen and some of The Dolomites--there are at least five dozen or so members spanning the globe--who will be joining him on select dates of a US tour late this summer, with shows across the Northwest and in New York.
Stevhen was bitten by the music bug early, thanks in part to the theme songs from Japanese Television shows from the 1980s. "I wanted to be able to play them, my Mother suggested learning violin," he recalls. "it just didn't cut it." So he tried guitar, but the instrument that eventually stuck: accordion. It was the perfect way to capture the entire geographic and sonic range of this heritage, a breadth that reflected the journey of the Roma, from the deserts of Rajasthan to villages in Romania and the Balkans.
He explored the Eastern European side first, especially once he struck out on his own living in an art punk house in Portland, Oregon. "We were into the Pogues and we wanted to do drinking songs and make our own folk music," says Baianu. "We started the Dolomites, but then my friend went his way, to Ireland, but I decided to stick with it. I decided to go more toward Eastern European stuff. My own side."
He dived in and honed in on his sound, the kind of music
Tom Waits might make if he frequented old-school Japanese bath houses and smoky Balkan coffee bars. Skills and wild style honed, he wound up playing as a sideman for bands like
Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello. But on a layover at Narita airport, heading back to the
Big|Brave Apple, after working in Indonesia with a gamelan theater group, he knew something was wrong.
"I was wondering what the f I was doing in New York," he remembers, "when I had family in Japan, grandparents aging. I knew I had to go back and spend time there to learn the language and explore."
And he did. Instead of looking for shows to play with a set band, however, Stevhen talked to venue bookers and connected with local musicians and collaborated with the darabuka (hand drum), Japanese traditional drum, sousaphone and drum of the chindon, the Japanese take on the marching band hired as living advertisement. He had the soulful feel of enka music, songs that speak of everyday joys and sorrows, often the background music at bathhouses (sentos).
These impromptu musical meetups morphed into a freeform, but more settled Japan-based version of the Dolomites, and spurred Stevhen to record their work together.
Yet even with Japanese musicians,
The Dolomites never stay in one place. After several sojourns in Mexico over the last few years, Stevhen has ever-expanding friendships in the Yucatan jungle. It led to the sprouting influences of the indigenous Mexican and cumbia rhythms that emerge in the latter parts of the Japan Years trilogy.
His idiosyncratic amalgam of all that he loves--the rhythms and modes of the Balkans, the unfettered thrills of punk and cumbia, the curious musical corners of Japan's enka traditions--is hypnotic and feels utterly organic. There are no overt, plotted cultural references, just rip-roaring, compelling sounds and feelings. "If you take some of my vocal approach, tribal scatting, the music that I make, it's not necessarily specific, nor concrete, it comes from a wide assortment of international, ancient traditions that I absorb and transmit." reflects Stevhen. "I'm just the medium. This music passes through my body, mind, and spirit, and is spawned into the Dolomites' music."
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